You can’t participate on the net for long without encountering spam. It pervades all aspects of the net, mostly due to the free way we use the word. If you have any familiarity with SEO, you will be familiar with most of the tricks termed ’spam’. There are a few that may have slipped under your radar.
Fooling the search engines with separate IP delivery
IP delivery is a technique that makes use of a site’s ability to send unique information to a recognised IP address. The site owner makes note of the known IP addresses of search engines and programs their site to deliver one set of information to those addresses. Any unknown addresses get another set of info. This enables the site to send an ‘SEO loaded’ page to the search engines, and still please internet users with a pleasant page. Like many black-hat SEO techniques, IP delivery can be used legitimately. Using it to deceive can get your pages kicked off the index.
Forum spam
Some industry forums and blogs can provide you with valuable inbound links due to their high PageRank. Some sites try to cut out the middle man by posting their links directly to the blog or forum. This won’t get you into direct trouble with the search engines, but bloggers and forum moderators are able to report spammers to Google. The ease with which a forum or blog comments section can be infiltrated makes them a prime target for spam, and the blogger’s or moderator’s tolerance for these kinds of posts is low. Talk to our experts at SEO Consult when you’re thinking about approaching social media sites.
Bad redirects
Some sites effectively hijack traffic when redirecting users. The guidelines on redirects set out that the redirected page must closely resemble the original. Doing otherwise puts your site reputation, and your rankings, at risk.
Wiki abuse
The growth in popularity of community-based knowledge sites and social tagging has attracted the attention of the SEO industry. Getting a page for your business on Wikipedia or having your tags dominate the social media sites is a real coup. It can be tempting to force your message onto these sites without consideration of their relevance and quality guidelines. This won’t get you into trouble with the search engines, but can be detrimental to your reputation. The vigilance of editors on these sites also means that Wiki spam is a bit of a waste of time. Any abuse can be caught within hours, and the boost will be short-lived.
The dance between the search engines and SEO experts is quite a delicate one. The SEO experts put one step forward, and the search engines lightly trip one step to the side in reaction. Usually, the niceties are observed, with both sides dancing close together and politely. Sometimes, the SEO experts dance a little too close, someone’s foot gets trodden on, and the search engines react with a slap that lands pages off the index.
